Women's Rights

Defending Women’s Rights

In recent years, Republican attacks in Congress on women’s access to health care and economic opportunity have been relentless. We have seen those attacks reach a fever pitch in the last year, in Congress and across the nation, with both verbal and physical attacks on Planned Parenthood.

I am proud to stand strong against these attacks and support women’s rights. As a son, brother and husband, I fought for women’s rights before I got to Congress, and I had a perfect record on women’s issues when in Congress. I am 100% pro-choice and I will always stand with Planned Parenthood.

I proudly supported the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA) to make our communities safer, and I was proud to support the Paycheck Fairness Act because everyone deserves to be paid the same pay for the same work.

I believe in a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body and her health, free from intrusion by the government. We must protect women’s access to comprehensive health care, including family planning, birth control, and safe, legal abortion. I consistently spoke out and voted against every Republican effort to ban access to critically important health care services. A woman’s health care decision is between her, her doctor and no one else.

I believe we can reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and subsequently the number of abortions, by expanding access to family planning and birth control. We should promote effective sex education programs to teach about abstinence, birth control options, sexually transmitted diseases, and other information to help young adults make good decisions now and throughout their lifetimes.

We should also expand ways that we support women and their families who choose to carry their pregnancy to term. We can support these women by improving access to quality prenatal care, as well as creating more pathways for adoption, including for same-sex couples and single parents.